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Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – New on the Shelves – #Poetry – Open a New Door by Kim Blades and Robbie Cheadle

Congratulations to Kim Blades and Robbie Cheadle for their collaborative poetry anthology – Open a New Door

About the collection

Open a New Door is a poetic peep into the lives of the poets, Kim Blades and Robbie Cheadle, both of whom live in South Africa.

The book is divided into four categories: God bless Africa, God bless my family and friends, God bless me and God bless corporates and work. Each part is sub-divided into the good, the bad and the ugly of the two poets’ experiences, presented in rhyming verse, free-style, haiku and tanka, in each of these categories and include colourful depictions of their thoughts and emotions.

The purpose of this book of poetry is encapsulated in the following tanka and haiku poems:

What drives me to write?
To share my innermost thoughts
The answer is clear
It’s my personal attempt
To make some sense of this world.

Kim Blades has lived in Durban, South Africa, since she was three years old. Kim was born in England. She is married, with two sons aged 18 and 20. The family have five dogs and two cats.

Since early childhood she has loved to read and write – poems and stories. English and History were her favourite subjects at school and she was encouraged to take up Journalism as a career by my high school teachers and parents.

Her favourite poets are the Romantics, especially those who wrote about the beauty of Nature like William Wordsworth in his poems: To A Butterfly, I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud, and many others.

Kim likes to write poems about the natural world and am inspired by simple everyday things that we all take for granted, like sunsets, flowers, birds and bugs.

Robbie Cheadle was born in London in the United Kingdom. Her father died when she was three months old and her mother immigrated to South Africa with her tiny baby girl. Robbie has lived in Johannesburg, George and Cape Town in South Africa and attended fourteen different schools. This gave her lots of opportunities to meet new people and learn lots of social skills as she was frequently “the new girl”.

Robbie is a qualified Chartered Accountant and specialises in corporate finance with a specific interest in listed entities and stock markets. Robbie has written a number of publications on listing equities and debt instruments in Africa and foreign direct investment into Africa.

Robbie is married to Terence Cheadle and they have two lovely boys, Gregory and Michael. Michael (aged 11) is the co-author of the Sir Chocolate series of books and attends school in Johannesburg. Gregory (aged 14) is an avid reader and assists Robbie and Michael with filming and editing their YouTube videos and editing their books.

A lovely memoir written by a mother and daughter team about a young girl living in the UK during WWII. Elsie is very little during the war but can’t help feel the fear and anxiety of her parents, siblings and neighbours. What I found interesting is that in spite of the threat of invasion, bombs falling on homes, air raid shelters, and food shortages, everyday life carried on. The cows were still milked, children attended school, went swimming and to the movies, neighbours met for tea, Christmas cake was made and Christmas was still celebrated. Never having lived under these circumstances, it was a good insight into another time and place. An added bonus is the wartime recipes at the end of the book. Well done Elsie Hancy Eaton and Robbie Cheadle!

About Smorgasbord - Variety is the Spice of Life.

My name is Sally Cronin and I am doing what I love.. Writing. Books, short stories, Haiku and blog posts. My previous jobs are only relevant in as much as they have gifted me with a wonderful filing cabinet of memories and experiences which are very useful when putting pen to paper. I move between non-fiction health books and posts and fairy stories, romance and humour. I love variety which is why I called my blog Smorgasbord Invitation and you will find a wide range of subjects. You can find the whole story here.
Find out more at https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/about-me/

What an exciting collaboration of great minds and poets… Thank you for sharing Sally I am sure this new book will be a huge success, While I know Robbie’s poetry well, Its so nice to meet Kim this way… And wish both every success…
Much love.

Thank you, Darlene. I have been very busy and plan to take a break from publishing for a bit now. My next Sir Choc will only be coming out in March 2019. I am glad the Christmas holidays are looming and I will have a break from work too.

Applesauce! It is wet here too. Silly me, I thought it was supposed to dry up some today… but rain all night, and all morning, with bad stuff coming in this afternoon. Definitely incentive to move back to New Mexico! 😀